I had the worst day ever today. I thought yesterday was bad, but today was several orders of magnitude worse.
At the end of my shift, after giving report, when I FINALLY started documenting, a long-time unit secretary/CNA (yes, she does BOTH) came up to me and asked, only half-jokingly,
"Whose oatmeal did you piss in to get THIS shitty assignment?!"
I dunno...God's?!
It wasn't supposed to be a bad day, but my patients had other ideas.
One died. One crashed. One was discharged (yay!). One's anxiety made him a huge PITA. And throw in an admission right at the end, and I was completely wrecked.
But, I work on an awesome unit where everyone pitches in to help, so that made a tremendous difference. Everything got done. All meds were given. All my patients were safe (yes, even the lady who died). Documentation is a nurse's bane, however.
I finally clocked out at 2107, picked up Tally, and headed to a local Irish pub. Good food, good music, and now I'm for bed. Luckily I don't go back to work until tomorrow night, so I can sleep in.
I just hope that the feeling that I don't know wtf I'm doing wears off soon...*sigh*.
4 comments:
During my 30 year career in a different field, I never lost the feeling I was faking it once in a while.
The routine becomes candy time and the other 2% is sheer terror.
Ain't life grand?
Heh, there will be wonderful days also. My Better-Two-Thirds, over the course of the past handful of weeks, has been working with a US Marine (Korea IIRC) who has COPD but is working as hard as he can, with all the assistance and encouragement she can provide, to carry The Flag in his town's parade this coming Memorial Day. He'll make it if we have to share the job with him.
Last week she got an email from a patient telling her he might have a lung, was about to make the trip, wish him luck. Less than 48 hours later she got another email from the guy telling her how wonderful he felt, how he'd taken his first walk with his new lung, and how he was arguing with them to let him go home.
On Monday she did some testing (PFT) on an elderly gentleman (WWII vet) to make sure he was strong enough to make the trip to Washington DC to take his place in the line of men being honored for their role in liberating a concentration camp 60 some odd years ago.
There are rewards in your profession that will bring tears to your eyes.
BTW, the Vets being honored were with the 2nd Infantry division when they overran Leipzig-Schönefeld (http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006133) and it wasn't 60 something years ago, more like 70 something. God bless them. And yes, he's making the trip.
Expect to white-knuckle the wheel on your way to work for anything from 12-24 months.
Any sooner, and either you're doing an easy job, you're SuperNurse, or you're a danger to the patients.
But eventually, one night, you'll realize that you still don't know everything, but that you know enough to pull off a shift without your head exploding, and you realize it's getting better.
You can't rush it, but that shift is so awesome when it comes along, you'll want to bask in the glow and make it linger.
Meantime, get your sleep, and keep on your toes. And enjoy your time off.
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